Zack Polanski is an “out of touch populist” whose Green Party’s pledge to use rent controls would drive down the quality of housing, Labour’s local election campaign chief told The i Paper.
Anna Turley, chair of the Labour Party, rebuffed Polanski’s promise to control rents, which he announced at his party’s local election launch last week.
Under the Greens’ proposals, councils would be granted powers to cap excessive rents for their local market and renters would be given a new right to demand energy efficiency improvements.
Ahead of May’s local and devolved nations’ elections, the Greens are targeting Labour voters to win over urban dwellers worried about the cost of living.
At the launch of his local election campaign last week, Polanski accused Labour of being “in the pockets” of housing developers. Under Green Party plans councils would be given the power to cap high rents in their areas.
But Turley hit back. In an interview with The i Paper in Leeds. “I think the Greens at the moment are coming up with all sorts of policies which they’re not costed. They have no idea whether they’re actually achievable,” she said.
“But we’ve seen in other areas around the country that actually sometimes there’s an impact that’s negative on waiting times and waiting lists and conditions if you implement rent controls. [The Greens] don’t know whether it works, and it’s just another example of how they’re just kind of out of touch populists,” she added.
According to the Institute of Economic Affairs think tank, while rent controls may initially lower rents for existing tenants, they typically lead to higher rents in uncontrolled sectors and reduce housing supply and quality. This is because the reduction in housing supply drives up rents in uncontrolled areas. In Scotland, the rent cap has been blamed for soaring rents, up by 11.6 per cent in some areas.
Instead, Labour is highlighting the new Renters’ Rights Act, allowing tenants to contest unfair rent hikes before a tribunal. This will also put an end to bidding wars by preventing landlords and letting agencies from seeking multiple offers on a property. Landlords will no longer be able to remove tenants arbitrarily.
Food and petrol costs biggest voter concern
Nevertheless, the Greens are looking to take control of at least four councils in London. And under pressure in the capital, Sir Sadiq Khan, Labour’s Mayor of London, has also lobbied central government to grant him powers to implement rent controls, including a proposed Private Rent Commission to cap rent increases and potentially freeze rents.
It’s not hard to see why the headline-grabbing idea is attractive to Khan. According to Tony Travers, Professor in Local Government at the London School of Economics, Labour could lose more than half its seats in the capital.
The i Paper caught up with Turley where she was talking to Labour councillors and activists in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s constituency of Leeds West and Pudsey as part of a tour of the UK ahead of vital elections next month.
Around 5,000 council seats are up for grabs across England, as well as the regional parliaments in Scotland and Wales. For Labour the stakes couldn’t be higher as it contends with the new era of five-party politics.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Leeds, where Turley is fending off questions about Green Party policy while Reform is the biggest threat in the area.
In a church hall in Bramley – nicknamed “The Big Apple” by locals – Labour councillors said food and petrol prices is the number one concern on the doorstep, with antisocial behaviour a close second.
But Reform is eating into their vote, with immigration also raised in this mostly white, working-class area. A Labour councillor said anti-immigrant sentiment is being spread via disinformation on social media.
‘These are going to be difficult elections’
Turley insists Labour is the only mainstream party that can proffer solutions as she sought to group the Greens and Reform as fringe extremists.
“We’ve got an offer for everyone in Britain that is a positive, progressive vision, which steps away from the division and the grievance politics. Both Reform and the Greens are all about turning people against each other. They’re all about driving grievance; we’re here to fix those problems,” she said.
But for the first time, a Cabinet minister acknowledged publicly Labour will fare poorly next month after slipping to fourth place or around 17 per cent in composite national polling.
“We know these are going to be difficult elections, because they always are for incumbent governments,” she said, pointing to the fact Labour performed badly in local elections in 1999 even after winning a parliamentary landslide just two years earlier.
But this doesn’t mean Labour will lose the next general election, due in 2029, Turley insisted. “I think the local elections are never a true indication of what’s to come in a general election,” she argued.
The elections on May 7 could have wider constitutional implications. Labour is on course to lose control of the Senedd in Cardiff for the first time since its inauguration in 1999 and could fail to boot out the Scottish National Party (SNP) from its leadership in Holyrood after 19 years in office.
Two outcomes may follow. If Welsh nationalists Plaid Cymru see off Reform to become the largest party in the Senedd, they have pledged to establish a national commission to explore Wales’s constitutional future, including a potential path toward independence. If the SNP wins in Edinburgh, it will argue a fresh mandate for another independence referendum.
Turley dismisses talk of constitutional change. “The reality is we want to make sure we’re doing what people care about most of all, and that’s helping them the cost of living, building public services that people can be proud of and are working and put people first, and making sure that their communities are well-funded and invested. So that’s the priority for us, and anything else is a distraction,” she said.
Labour faces losing 1,900 council seats
While Labour is playing up Sir Keir Starmer’s record as an international statesman at a time of global conflict to stem a wipe-out, results will be brutal. A projection by Professor Stephen Fisher, an elections expert at Oxford University, suggested Labour would suffer a net loss of 1,900 councillors, over three in five of the council seats up for election.
A Labour wipeout would also lead to fresh questions about Starmer’s stewardship of the party.
The prime minister’s Cabinet allies have privately told The i Paper that the days following the elections are a moment of danger for the premier, even as they downplay the chances of a leadership challenge. Will Starmer have to resign if the results are catastrophic? “No, not at all,” Turley insists.
And off she went to knock on doors and deliver Labour leaflets accompanied by Cabinet minster Hilary Benn and Mayor of West Yorkshire, Tracy Brabin. Whether voters are in a mood to hear what they’ve got to say will be answered next month.
Reform and the Green Party have been contacted for comment.
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